Julian Assange prepares his next move

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 19:15:00 +0000

In a week or two, the U.K. Supreme Court will rule on the final appeal for Julian Assange, the editor in chief of WikiLeaks. If he loses, he will be extradited to Sweden to answer questions about alleged sexual misconduct. His legal team fears extradition to Sweden ultimately would mean extradition to the U.S., where Assange is the subject of a grand jury investigation in northern Virginia.

Meanwhile, the court martial process has begun for Pfc. Bradley Manning, a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst accused of leaking hundreds of thousands classified or otherwise restricted documents WikiLeaks published. Assange’s London-based lawyer, Geoffrey Robertson, told a law and media seminar in Houston that he believes the humiliations and the nine months of solitary imposed on Manning were an effort to make him “falsely confess to being groomed by Assange.” (Robertson said Assange offered to answer the Swedish prosecutor’s questions by phone from the U.K., but she refused without further explanation.)

Salon.com > Douglas Lucas

Julian Assange prepares his next move